Much anticipated privatization of the two remaining incumbent telecom operators in Bosnia will create a new dynamic and changing environment for all participants in this sector, especially for potential investors that are trying to find the right approach and a competitive market niche. The intention of this paper is to provide an overview of regulatory developments in the telecommunication sector over the past two decades, major challenges, accomplishments, and the role played by State Communication Regulatory Agency (CRA). The research includes the analyses of adopted Sector Policies, the Telecommunication Law itself, as well as the rules and major decisions issued by CRA. Through a countrywide survey and multinomial logit estimation of consumer’s selection between the two largest mobile carriers, as well as in-depth interviews with the sector participants and CRA – we provided  consumers’ and participants’ opinions of the sector development, achievements, challenging issues, and major stepping stones. Asserting its role as an independent regulatory authority and despite unprecedented political difficulties, the CRA has managed to complete the overall process of sector liberalization. It has done so mostly by utilizing an ex-ante form of regulation and proactively addressing critical areas for the sector development. But, market conditions are constantly changing and the demand for ex-post regulation will bring new challenges for regulatory authorities. The privatization of remaining incumbent carriers, making the maximum use of local-loop unbundling and open network provision, is only one of them. Also, securing the balanced infrastructure development and ensuring that the overall social welfare gains are equally distributed throughout the country will present new and evermore challenging questions for country telecommunication regulatory authorities.

Understanding consumer behavior in media advertising enables companies to effectively direct marketing activities toward the target market. Today, companies are expected to continually communicate with current and potential customers. Although online advertising methods are a relatively new concept compared to the established traditional ways of advertising, integrated marketing communication consists of messages sent to consumers using a set of various marketing instruments. The results of our research have shown that the users of telecommunication services in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) pay more attention to the marketing messages sent over the online media. Social networks are the marketing communication medium preferred by most of the telecomm users in BiH, followed by television, billboards, text messages, company web page, web advertisements, newspapers, e-mail, and the radio. The results presented in this paper consider consumers’ behavior in one of the most dynamic BiH sectors, and provide an insight in the specific media channel of marketing communication.

In this paper we analyze determinants which affect the selection of mobile carriers in a post-conflict environment – Bosnia and Herzegovina. We apply relevant probability modelling to test perceptions of individual respondents on different network effects obtained through a targeted representative survey. Furthermore, we explore whether some non-traditional influences might affect costumers, focusing on the role of demographic characteristics. Our results confirm that conventional network effects have a role in carrier selection, although they are different across carriers. However, we identify that the ethnicity of respondents overwhelms the traditional network effects by having the highest magnitude in the model. Our findings show that the “ethnic affiliation” of mobile carriers, attributed by the users, remains a persistent factor in attracting and keeping telecommunication costumers in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Using the Internet as a communication channel between a company and its stakeholders is a norm in today’s economy, and the Web-based company reports have long replaced traditional forms of corporate reporting. Most investors base their entire first impression of a company on information available on its Web page, and often, an entire initial performance assessment is based on data available on-line. Internet Financial Reporting (IFR), in its broadest form, has become one of the pivotal factors in effective functioning of capital markets. Building on earlier studies, we analyzed the IFR practices of companies traded on two stock exchanges in Bosnia and Herzegovina by estimating multiple regressions separately for both stock exchanges. Our findings clearly show that voluntary disclosure of reports and other forms of company information for analyzed companies is still simplistic. Furthermore, our estimations revealed that profitability measured by return on equity and market activity represented by share turnover significantly affect the IFR index for companies traded on the Banja Luka Stock Exchange (BLSE); with companies traded on the Sarajevo Stock Exchange (SASE), size measured by total asset, as well as market activity measured by share turnover, have a positive effect on the IFR index. On both stock exchanges, companies from the financial industry have on average higher IFR scores than other companies. With respect to expanding earlier studies, this study used an extended sample for Bosnian and Herzegovinian assessments, and as a result, observed additional factors related to the Internet Financial Reporting practices of companies traded on two stock markets in BiH.

The upcoming privatization of two remaining telecom operators in Bosnia, and not so recent privatization of one of the incumbent, will create dynamic and changing sector environment for all participants. At the same time the investors are scanning the sector trying to find the right approach and the market niche for more competitive start. In our overview we have looked at regulatory status, core services figures, followed by financial overview for incumbent operators in the past decade, as well as mobile users’ attitudes in carrier section. What we will show is that sector development and the expansion of consumers’ base is far from over. The services offered are still at rudimental level, and the potential owners of incumbent operators as well as new entrants will have considerable room for development. Financial analysis has shown that revenue for all three incumbent operators is stagnating in the last years, while the small private operators are experiencing steady growth. Although BH Telecom is still the largest company in the sector, it dose face slight decline in net profit while its biggest competitor – Telecom Srpske in 2013 had biggest ROE. We find that BH Telecom and Telecom Srpske had unexploited franchise growth and competiveness potential. We assessed the intrinsic value of all three companies stocks by application of Franchise Factor Model and find that BH Telecom stock price is in equilibrium, Telecom Srpske stock is underpriced and Croatian Telecom is stock strongly overpriced. Finally, the analyses of consumers’ perspective have revealed existence of network effect in mobile market and the strong competition between two market leaders. In all, BiH telecommunication sector is still in its expanding phase and the potential owners of state operators as well as new entrants will have competitive well regulated market.

This paper reviews selected empirical literature most relevant to network economy. Our selection includes empirical studies assessing network effects and strategies in different sectors and industries. Since network effects – the increase in value of consuming a product if many consumers use the same product – are a feature of many markets and in particular of many high-technology products, we have tried to include a wide variety of empirical literature over the past decades and to make a user-friendly guide for future researches in this important field. Our intention is not to steer future researchers in any particular direction, but to emphasize the need for closer analysis of the consumer interactions and the decision-making process in network industries, as well as better understanding of how network effects operate.

S-curve model is one of the fundamental expressions that give generic description of technological development. Introduction of a new technology is often a big step for company and can be implemented in various ways, frequently producing negative transition gap referred as S-curve gap. Consequently, it raises costs of transition and brings the company in the situation in which the users cannot achieve the same efficiency as they could with old technology. Having this in mind, it is important for companies to determine optimal point and modus for replacing an old technology with a new one. Technology lifecycle described with S-curve can be mathematically represented with a function extrapolated from data about technology itself. That enforces the idea of mathematical modeling of this particular problem, and using this model to forecast technology growth and optimal point of introduction of the new technology. Mathematical expressions that describe S-curves are often referred as growth curves. Growth curves are using data from the past and presence to forecast the technology growth in the future.

Often transformation of old information systems to new ones is followed with number of organizational and business efficiency problems. Technology transformation creates additional burden to the organization mechanics and has a serious impact on overall business dynamics. Although, all IT professional have experienced, this has not been sufficiently researched or documented.

In this paper we give an overview of S-curve model, mathematical representations, using mathematical models and problems related to S-curve gap with mathematical interpretation, as well as research data on technology transformation among several top BiH companies.